‘Make the place a cauldron’: Luton’s Kenilworth Road ready for top flight

‘There’s been a lot of talk and a lot of noise about Kenilworth Road and I hope people see the positive of it tomorrow,” says Rob Edwards as he prepares for Luton Town’s first home game of the season. “I hope there’s real noise, [that] the fans make the place a cauldron because it can make a difference. Our supporters have been through some hard times over recent history, so coming to the Kenny this weekend will be something really special for them.”

Edwards is the manager who has presided over a small miracle in the past 10 months. He has taken Luton to the Premier League for the first time and their home at Kenilworth Road has become a symbol of their unlikely success. Photos of the modest stadium, the smallest the division has witnessed with a capacity of less than 11,000, have been ubiquitous in coverage of the club. The ground evokes history, limitation and a certain kind of Englishness. It is also a world away from how elite football customarily presents itself.

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The charms of Kenilworth Road are already notorious. For away fans to get into the Oak Road Stand they famously have to walk through a row of terraced houses. Once inside they will find terracing where the seats are so tightly packed as to make standing up compulsory. The Main Stand (that’s what it’s actually called) has stood for more than a century and is made of wood. To get to the toilets you have to stoop to pass through the exit. As for the toilets themselves, they are even described as “awful” by the club’s own historian.

Roger Wash has been working for Luton for 40 years, but supported the club his entire life and grew up round the corner from the ground. His Hatters Heritage initiative is dedicated to seeking out and preserving connections to the club’s past, from the minute book that codified its foundation in 1885 to a pair of boots worn by Malcolm Macdonald during Supermac’s two-year spell in Bedfordshire (88 appearances, 49 goals). “It’s a proper old-school football ground,” he says of Kenilworth Road. “It’s not very salubrious, but some visiting fans like that. They love the experience, it’s not like going to the Emirates.”

Luton, who host West Ham on Friday night, have been prevented from playing at the Kenny this season before now due to some essential renovations. The ground’s Bobbers Stand had to be knocked down and rebuilt, a project that was completed in an astonishing 13 weeks. The Bobbers used to be where the executive boxes stood, a legacy of the last time Luton were in the top flight in the 90s, plastic pitch and all (the usual “football existed before the Premier League” disclaimers apply here). In the new Bobbers the boxes have been replaced by a media centre, with a handful of new seats added and some VAR cameras, too.

The new stand was trialled for the first time in the Carabao Cup win against Gillingham in midweek and Wash has already noted a difference. “The old Bobbers had no atmosphere, but it did have a low-slung roof,” he says. “Because of the necessity of having a gantry for the TV cameras the roof is now angled more acutely, so people are basically going to get wet.” Wash has also observed that the floodlights are brighter this season. “There’s presumably a Premier League regulation for that,” he says. (There is – regulation K.172.1 stipulates: “A club’s stadium must have floodlights giving an average of at least 1650 lux and a minimum of at least 1000 lux when measured towards the principal camera on the television gantry.”)

The stipulations and demands of modern football are a world away from the era – the eras – that Kenilworth Road evokes. And yet, as long as it stands, vestiges of the old school will remain. Some of those, as Edwards notes, can have a direct impact on a game of football. Not only are the compact dimensions of Kenilworth Road conducive to creating a noisy atmosphere, they also shrink the pitch. “Some people might not like it, they might think it’s a bit tight. They might want a bit more,” he says. “But it’s gritty. It’s tight, it’s compact, it’s intense. It’s right there.”

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Well, it is for now at least. Plans for Luton to leave Kenilworth Road are almost as old as the club itself. But this summer the chief executive, Gary Sweet, released images of a proposed new home: Power Court Stadium, less than a mile down the road but, at 19,500, almost double the capacity. Even this project, it must be noted, has been subject to delays and work remains dependent on a final planning application being approved but, be it in 2025 or 2026, it appears the Hatters will be quitting the Kenny.

Edwards is keen to extol the virtues of Kenilworth Road but he is a modern coach, an ambitious man, and he knows which way the wind is blowing. Modern facilities mean fewer hurdles for players, they mean more revenue for the club, and Edwards believes a move away from where they have played their football for 118 years will not mean Luton losing what is unique to them. “There is something special and romantic about our place,” he says. “[But] I think you can still have a new stadium and keep what you have, whatever it is that unique to you. It just probably takes a bit of time. Like anything, maybe like moving home.”